Chapter 5 - The Puritans Prepare for the Second Coming

Summary

For Puritans living in a “New” England, the promise of Jesus Christ’s return was a source of both dread and hope, a paradox that lay at the heart of their eschatology. In their writings, the end times was figured, by turns, as an epoch unfolding in the churches of New England, a cataclysmic "Day of Doom" and judgment, and a ray of hope for physical and spiritual restoration. Jesus’s words recorded in Matthew 24:42, "Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come," commanded righteous vigilance and detachment from worldly things; they also spurred paranoia and a keen attention to world affairs, especially in Palestine. Though Puritan theologians did not agree on the time, manner, or place of Christ’s return, they imagined a unique role for New England, even if as a "specimen of the new heavens and new earth," as Increase Mather wrote. This essay examines how Puritan writers dramatized and tested these apocalyptic visions in a range of literary forms, from sermons and treatises to epic poetry and meditative verse.